SINGAPORE 10 June 2019: The Anti-Chope Movement sets its sights on the HDB balloting system, citing it as a ‘pet-peeve’, and demands that it be replaced by a winner-takes-all battle royale system instead.
“It’s 2019. Flats at HDBs, BTOs, and SBOs are meant to be PUBLIC HOUSING, PUBLIC [repeated for emphasis], it is a first-come-first-get-a-house (physically-claimed) basis,“ said the Anti-Chope Movement. That is why you pay an economical price living in places like that as opposed to living in a condominium.
“To ‘reserve a unit in a HDB balloting system’ is not a life hack,” said the Anti-Chope Movement. “In my opinion, it is an ungracious act carried out by individuals who are conforming to what everyone else is doing and taking to this advantage ‘Singaporean-tradition’ of reserving a seat for selfish reasons.”
“Instead of a token to represent your claim, we should fight to the death to claim the HDB unit. Remember, it’s public, so it’s free-for-all, it is a first-come-first-serve type thing,” said the Anti-Chope Movement.
The Anti-Chope Movement has previously campaigned against reserving hawker centre seats with ‘chope’ items because it is a ‘pet-peeve.’
The Anti-Chope Movement did not elaborate on why reserving a table with a token item to show that someone else has arrived at the seat first and thus has reserved the seat is more ‘selfish’ than leaving a seat-warmer peer like a hawker centre scarecrow instead.
To argue its case, the Anti-Chope Movement posted this scenario on its Facebook page: “It’s lunchtime, it’s the peak lunch hour at the food court, hordes of hungry humans and you’re carrying your tray of hot food… you see an empty seat you make your way there only to find it being ‘choped’… by tissue packs, lanyards, namecards, keys, water bottle, umbrella, newspaper… You thought it was a public and shared space!”
The Anti-Chope Movement again did not elaborate on why, if chope-ing is the social norm and debatably an icon of Singaporean culture already, did the person in the scenario not just chope a seat before going off to buy food and instead passive-aggressively bitch about chopers online behind the guise of a Facebook page.
One wonders how the people behind the Anti-Chope Movement can reach so far down to their desk keyboards to type their snark on Facebook considering that they have put themselves on a horse higher than the 40-storey HDB blocks in Toa Payoh.
The Merlion Times 
